Bing and Mobile

Recently, as we’re sure you’re aware, Google’s mobile-friendliness update began rolling out. Since Google are the giants of search engines, the most popular choice across the majority of the planet, it seems likely that other search engines would follow in Google’s footsteps. Which is a nice way of saying they might copy off Google. No shame in that though, it would be foolish not to do something in a way you know works, right?

Well, as reported by Search Engine Land, that’s what Bing appear to be doing with their mobile-friendly label. Even if they did keep it quiet. The label is just like that in Google, stating simply ‘Mobile-friendly’ underneath the site URL and before the meta-description on results in the SERPs.

This news does come less than 6 months after Bing revealed some of their mobile ranking factors. In a blog post they said that some ways they improve mobile relevance are as follows:
• We identify and classify mobile and device-friendly web pages and websites
• We analyze web documents from a mobile point-of-view by looking at:
• Content compatibility
• Content readability
• Mobile functionality (to weed out “junk”, that is pages that are 404 on mobile or Flash only etc.)
• Return more mobile-friendly URLs to the mobile SERP
• Ranking the results pages based on all of the above

Does this mean that Bing may also be introducing a mobile-friendly algorithm? Maybe, maybe not.

What it does show is the increasing use of mobile devices to perform searches, and the growing importance of being mobile-friendly that comes with that.

If you would like more help or information regarding mobile-friendliness, talk to someone at Search Marketing Group today.